High School Memories

We had to wear gray skirts, which were supposed to do away with competition. However, that left competition on the top with cashmere sweaters, etc. Skirt lengths had to be no shorter than one inch above the knee, and boys’ hair could not be below the collar line. I loved the plays and musicals in the high school auditorium and had great fun singing and dancing the “I’m So Pretty” number in West Side Story. Another musical I enjoyed was Lil’ Abner. Remember The Crucible? That got us thinking. Mr. Ryan repeated the grammar and punctuation rules so many times that I groaned out loud when he did it again. Now I am stuck with an “eagle eye” for punctuation and catch errors in Berkeley Historical Society publications. I remember being inspired by Mr. Strauch’s creative writing class.

The drill team and song girls traveled to football games on the bus, and we must have driven the driver insane by singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” the full 99 rounds. Some guys brought a coffin to school, and we had a mock funeral for South Pas before the game. Remember that? Roger Pfaff, I think, became an instant hero when he set a trashcan on fire. Was that the worst thing he could have done? Of course, all the dances and grad night were so elegant and lovingly planned. Remember the Chevy Super Sports and Corvettes?

Into the Present

I graduated from Pine Manor in Wellesley, Massachusetts and received a BA in English and a teaching credential from UC Berkeley. I live in Berkeley and am married to Stephen Rosen, who is retired from a successful law practice. I have two married daughters, Tanya and Natasha, and two grandsons, Emerson and Asa and another due in October. Tanya Rosen-Jones took the portrait of me. I retired as a preschool teacher after many years with the Berkeley Unified School District. I still love interacting with the little ones by doing vision screening to check for lazy eye and acuity problems.

I have been fascinated with history since childhood, and have done extensive family history, including research and travel in Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, England, Germany and Switzerland. I am past president of the Berkeley Historical Society and remain active by writing books and doing their publicity. I am currently writing a book called Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley – A Noble Venture about the successful Berkeley Co-op, which took its inspiration from Christian socialism and consumer education. I have written a few children’s stories, too.

Photography is one of my major passions. I hike every Wednesday and have put together a hiking booklet of trail descriptions and sightings with other hikers. We explore the Mt. Tam watershed and other parts of Marin, Sonoma, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. I also enjoy gardening, but my husband puts in more consistent work there. I also love traveling and took a memorable trip last summer to archeological sites and resorts in Turkey and Greece. Some highlights were exploring Istanbul and flying in a balloon over the fairy chimney tufas of Cappadocia.

I enjoyed seeing my old classmates at the reunion and at Twohey’s the day afterwards. I just wish that I could have spent more time at the reunion, but that was not possible with the death of my mother.